OT More nuclear waste problems.

[harry]

These people just don't want to deal with nuclear waste properly.

[Nightjar]

Again, it is waste from a nuclear weapons programme, not from nuclear power. We all know that, because of the pressures to get the weapons developed, the early nuclear weapons programmes cut corners.

[The Natural Philosopher]

And of course in reality it was only a 'problem' for Guardian readers

"There was no spread of contamination after the partial tunnel collapse or during the emergency response work to fill the hole in the tunnel, and no workers were injured in the incident or the response."

In short its about as exciting as a child falling of a swing and bruising its knee in a village playground.

[Chris Hogg]

It's a long-closed site, last used in 1988. The waste is a legacy of the rush to make plutonium for nuclear weapons in the latter part of the last century, much like the legacy waste at Sellafield. Burying the Purex waste in situ at Hanford is being considered anyway. Irrelevant to the waste from nuclear power stations of today.

[Brian Gaff]

Surely if we can make solar cells work from the sun we ought to be able to make some form of cell that works from the radiation from waste? Brian

[The Natural Philosopher]

well of course you can, but radiation from waste is a bit like a candle

5 miles away compared with the sun..

it takes a heck of a lot of radiation to boil water in a reactor..

there's not a lot of energy in a random bit of plutonium decaying

[tabbypurr]

300kV radioisotope batteries exist. So do thermal decay powered generators. The output is tiddly.

NT

[newshound]

+1

You beat me to the WNN link!

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Nightjar escribió:

You mustn't confuse poor harry with facts.

[Tim Streater]

Have you looked up what sort of radiation that is and therefore how that might work?

[Jethro_uk]

Didn't the USSR use Pl reactors for remote weather stations ? A la "The Martian" ?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Bryan reminds me of myself at 7 years old.

I built two shafts with step up gears going to each one from the other.

My idea was that I had invented a perpetual motion machine

It took me some time to figure out why it just locked up solid

[The Natural Philosopher]

yes, because the mouse in a treadmill needed feeding

[Nightjar]

Don't worry, he wouldn't recognise a fact if it bit him.

[harry]

I suggest it will be a very major operation to extricate this train from a collapsed tunnel. And expensive.

[harry]

Very good. Now the permanent solution?

[harry]

tjar

It hardly matters where it's come from. It still has to be dealt with. And still they pile up more and more.

[newshound]

[newshound]

Not quite, they used Strontium 90. But plutonium generators have been used for a number of "deep space" probes.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Harry. In this life there are no permanent solutions.